Hope's Children
by God's Demonic Messenger
Summary: Surrounded and abandoned, Winter Schnee and a platoon of SpecFor soldiers don't harbor even a shred of hope of getting out alive. Lucky for them, someone else does. STRONG LANGUAGE BUT NO OTHER MATURE CONTENT
1. Author's Note

_Author's Note:_

 _This story is the second part of a trilogy, the individual elements being thus:_

 _1) Hope in a Handbasket_

 _2) Hope's Children_

 _3) Hope's Change_

 _I wrote this and the other stories in this defacto trilogy during the Christmas break of 2015, AKA the holiday break of Season 3 of RWBY. Therefore, in these stories, the canon is what it was before the events of the second half of Season 3._

 _If it happened at any point in that second half, it didn't happen in the canon of these stories._

 _I hope you enjoy them, and as always, Read and Review._


	2. Hopeful Situation

The wind swept across the flat expanse of charred grass, heartlessly carrying the smell of smoking circuits and sizzling flesh to a wide depression where a handful of forms that cared about such things lay tight against the ground.

These forms moved as little as possible, crawling only on their stomachs when they did.

Chunks of metal and bundles of wire lay strewn all across one edge, with much of it centered around one form in particular.

"How much longer, Samuels?" A grizzled man in his early forties with more than his share of grey hair asked.

"Almost there, Major," the young man replied, hands buried in wires and circuit boards. "I've got the radio chip isolated and the wiring hooked up. Just gotta attach it to the buck converter so I don't fry it and then-"

"Finish faster," a tall woman said. Her face was strewn with dirt, her white hair made grey by the jet-black soil.

Samuels ducked his head as if dodging a slash from a Grimm, "Yes ma'am." The other soldiers immediately looked away from the white-clad officer.

"Captain Schnee," Major Bradley whispered darkly.

A pause. "Yes, sir." Winter Schnee looked away from Samuels.

"Got it!" Samuels said.

" _Quiet!"_ Winter and the major hissed.

Samuels ducked again. "You'll have to come over here, sirs," he said cradling a tangled bundle of wires and circuit boards, "It's probably not a good idea to move this."

The two officers crawled over to the corporal while the two dozen other soldiers watched.

"Take this, sir, and plug it into your phone," Samuels said, handing the major a cable. "You should be able to hear—"

"Command, is that you? Over," the major interrupted. They all waited in a silence so tense it was tangible. "This is Major Jason Bradley, who is this?"

The sound that followed resembled an errant breeze far more than nearly thirty soldiers sighing.

"Listen up, Lieutenant," Bradley whispered harshly. "Our mission was a failure. Gleam City is still infested with Grimm. My troops and I are trapped in open ground with Grimm all around us.

"We need—What?" Bradley demanded quietly. "Yes, a failure! The city is still swarming with Grimm. Same with the outpost," a pause, "Every damn mech is destroyed, that's why! Them and half my Company."

Bradley listened to whatever the Lieutenant was saying for a long minute. "Yes, we need evac! Why do you think—" another pause, "Then get me someone who can, you damn butterbar!"

The tension was back. The elite soldiers of Colonel Bradley's special operations Company were not used to feeling quite so helpless. They looked around at each other, no doubt seeing the same look on every face.

Well, except Winter's. She'd never let that sort of emotion show. It was one reason they called her the Ice Queen when they thought she couldn't hear.

"Yes, Captain, we need an evac," Bradley said. The whole group paled when they saw his face change. "There has to be some way. There aren't that many of us!"

Bradley listened. "Look, it's just twenty four of my men, Major Winter Schnee, and myself. One troop transport-" Bradley paused. "I know there are too many Grimm, that's why we need an evac!"

The soldiers started trading entirely more grim expressions. Winter saw several bow their heads, waiting for what they knew came next.

"Look, you can't just-" Bradley looked at his phone. "Hello? Captain? Hello?" a long pause said some rather terrible things about the situation. Then, "Yes, Captain, I am—What? But you just—" Bradley shook his head. "Nevermind. What do you mean—How are they getting here?" Bradley grunted, "Nevermind, nevermind. We'll keep an eye out for them, however the hell they're getting here," another pause, "Yes, four _is_ better than none."

Bradley hung up, then whispered so quietly Winter could barely hear, " _Same with shitty plans._ "

He looked around at the other soldiers and their resigned faces and sighed. "I don't think any of us really have any illusions about the situation, so I'm just going to be blunt. There's not going to be a shuttle." His troops hung their heads. "However," they raised them again, "Command is sending a team of Huntresses to extract us."

"' _A'_ team, sir?" Winter said.

"That's one hell of a long shot, sir," one sergeant said. Apparently, the NCOs didn't see much point in keeping their morale up either.

"Long shot or not, it's the only one we're going to get," Bradley said. "And it's a hell of a lot better than the one they were going to give us."

"Sir?" Winter asked.

"That Captain _Guera_ ," he practically spat the name, "was going to write us off, until the Huntresses volunteered," Bradley said. "Apparently they're on loan from Vale, otherwise Command would never give them leave to do this. They must have overheard the Captain."

Winter's naturally stoic face stiffened.

"Sir, what are four Huntresses supposed to do that we can't?" the same sergeant said.

"No idea, Lang, but I'm not going to question it," Bradley said, sinking back into the dirt beside Winter. "You know what they say about gift horses."

The soldiers watched over the lip of their small depression as hundreds of Grimm wandered aimlessly all around them. Simple luck was the only thing keeping them safe. Luck that so far the Grimm had stayed far from their thin sanctuary. Luck that they hadn't heard the rare noise the soldiers made.

The soldiers had begun slowly, quietly digging into the depression, deepening it and widening it until, more than an hour later, they could crouch their way around it. The sergeants had thought it a decent way to keep the enlisted occupied.

Bradley was just about to resume helping them when the short-range radio crackled in his ear. Then it started to speak, " _Major Bradley, you there?_ "

Bradley frowned. "Yes, I am. Who's this?" He hit a few buttons on his phone to let the rest of his troops hear.

" _Jake Richards, Beacon Academy pilot extraordinaire, inbound with Vale's best,_ " the voice responded. Bradley developed a second knot in his stomach. His soldiers moved around nervously. " _Think I got you on camera. Give us a wave_."

Feeling a curious mix of confusion and rising hopelessness after a brief kindling at the sound of the man's voice, Bradley waved indistinctly up at the sky.

" _Yep, got you,_ " Jake replied. " _Give us a minute to get ready and we'll swing over and drop off the team._ "

"You can't land here!" Bradley said. "You'll get us all killed!"

The sound of Mr. Richard's smile grew wider. " _Major, I know my business, so try not to insult me. I'm your ride out of here, remember._ " There was a pause over the radio. Before Bradley could reply, Mr. Richards continued, " _Aaand they're off. Should be there in… in... what do you think Lynda?_ "

A woman's voice. " _By now? About a hundred and ninety seconds. Depending._ "

"What?" Bradley asked stupidly.

" _Hundred eighty seconds, Major,_ " Mr. Richards said, the smile now thick in his voice, " _Watch the skies._ "

Everyone craned their necks in their half-crouches to look up at the bright sky. Eventually, one private pointed up at the sky and started to say something...

Only to be interrupted by the sudden appearance of a young girl in red and black. Before the soldiers could begin to process this sudden addition to their sanctuary, she pulled the bright red hood off her head and three other girls landed behind her.

They almost didn't need to bend to stay below the lip of the impromptu foxhole.

Bradley stared.

"Told you," one of the girls said quietly. She was pale with black hair tied tight at the top by a black bow. She wore a black vest and a white shirt, and on her back he could see the handle of a weapon. She was pointing at the feet of one of the other girls. "It threw you off."

The bright blonde girl shifted in place, staring at her brown leather-booted feet, "Damn, you're right." She grabbed hold of her one-sided skirt and swung it back and forth. "It did pull me to the side. Nearly a whole foot!" The yellow metal of her wristband shifted slightly as it caught the fabric, revealing several red shells and a short gun barrel.

Beside him, through the fog of his disbelief, confusion, fear, and anger, he heard Captain Schnee whisper, " _No. No, no, no, no, no..."_

"Major Bradley?" The girl in red and black said. Her voice was high and childlike. But then, for all intents and purposes, she was still a child. They all were.

"Yes," he replied numbly.

The girl gave a mock salute. The soldiers cringed. "Team RWBY reporting for duty." Then, giving a wave, "Hi, Winter!"

Everyone turned to the woman in white.

"What are you doing here, Weiss?!" Winter demanded, looking right past the girl in red at the white-clad girl behind her.

"Rescuing you, of course," Weiss replied, smiling.

"Captain," Bradley said, looking hard at his subordinate. "Who are these children?"

"Hey!" the blonde said.

"Shh, Yang," the girl in red said.

"But Ruby-"

"They're Team RWBY," Captain Schnee replied stiffly. "Students at Beacon Academy."

" _Students?!_ " Bradley demanded, turning on the girls. "Command sent _students_ to get us out?"

"Actually, we volunteered," the girl in the black bow said.

"Yeah," Ruby agreed, "What Blake said. When we heard Weiss' sister was in trouble and those guys in Atlas HQ weren't going to help, we figured, 'well, impossible rescues _are_ sort of our thing.' So we cleared it with Ironwood and, long story short, here we are."

All of the surviving members of Major Bradley's company turned as one to stare at the Ice Queen in their midst.

"You stupid idiots," Winter snarled. "We can't _be_ evac'd. We all know it," the soldiers stared at her but she ignored them, "and now you show up thinking you can _save_ us? All you're going to accomplish is dying in vain!"

The other soldiers went utterly silent. "Really, Winter?" Weiss replied archly. "If that's the case, if you really don't think you're going to live through this, then we might as well try and do what we came here to do." The soldiers looked back at the young woman.

"And what is that?" Bradley demanded. "Did you even—"

"You need extraction but you're surrounded," Blake interrupted. "If you suddenly _weren't_ surrounded, Jake could land and pick you up."

"Yeah," Yang said, "So the plan is distraction. We just have to make enough noise."

"And not die," Ruby finished. "Because dying isn't very fun... That's what I've heard, anyway."

Bradley ground his teeth, trying to think of any rational reason not to let them make their attempt. Command had made it clear that these four children were the only support they were going to get.

Before he could, however, someone spoke.

"Wait a moment. Did you say _Ironwood_ cleared this?" a sergeant asked. "As in General Ironwood?"

"Yes," Blake replied. "We were telling him about some of our favorite missions while we waited for Professor Ozpin to arrive. That's when we heard your call."

"You were idly chatting with the Commander in Chief of the entire Atlas military?" Another sergeant demanded. Interrupted from his circling thoughts, Bradley looked over at Captain Schnee and saw, to his massive surprise, that she did not seem surprised by this new information.

"Pretty much, yeah," Yang replied with a surprising _lack_ of smugness. As if being on chatting terms with the chief military officer of another country was below her evidently boastful notice.

"Well this is a _military_ operation," Captain Schnee said coldly, "and unless you have direct _orders_ from Ironwood allowing you to participate in said operation-"

"Drop it, captain," Bradley said, making his decision. If Ironwood really did let them come, then maybe… "You said it yourself, we're all dead anyway. What difference does it make if they try?"

"But sir-"

"We don't _need_ your permission, Winter," Weiss replied coldly. "We aren't in your military; we don't have to follow your orders."

"We _are_ going to get you out of here," Blake said flatly. "If anyone has a problem with that," she looked around at the soldiers surrounding them, "Tough."

"Right, everyone remember the plan?" Ruby asked, one hand on the dirt-mound lip of the foxhole. In the dark of the cloudy night, her white hand stood stark against the black soil.

Bradley shook his head. Humoring them was more enjoyable than brooding. "Yes. Wait for your signal, then wait for an opportunity to make our way south to the hills about five miles due north."

"Exactly," Blake said, smiling.

"And again, what is the signal?" Bradley demanded.

"You'll know it when it happens," Yang replied with a smirk. "Telling you would just spoil the surprise."

Bradley had to admit one thing: the girls were masters at distracting them all from their rapidly approaching deaths. Aggravation was definitely a step up from depressed hopelessness.

"Ready, ladies?" Weiss asked. The others nodded.

Bradley looked over at Captain Schnee's face. She seemed back to her typical distanced self.

"Okay, let's do this," Ruby said, peeking over the edge of the foxhole. "Lead the way, Blake."

The black-clad girl immediately leapt smoothly and silently up and onto the flat, grass-covered ground. Ruby and her other teammates followed right behind, and together they ran into the night.

In a handful of seconds, even the bright white of Weiss' dress couldn't be seen.

"Well," one corporal eventually said quietly, "that was fun while it lasted."

Nobody disagreed.


	3. Begin Phase One

Blake led the others through the dark, keeping them low and as far from the nearest Grimm as she could. Ruby couldn't see a thing, but she held tightly to Blake's free hand and, following her lead, sprinted blindly through the night behind her mopey teammate.

It took almost an hour to reach the hills surrounding the eastern edge of the city. They'd had to discretely take out a few Grimm on the way up, one of which got a bit dicey, but it was worth it to have the vantage point.

" _I can_ just _see a couple deathstalker holes by the park,"_ Ruby whispered, peering through one of the pairs of night-vision binoculars General Ironwood had given them.

" _I think that's a nevermore nest on top of the burger place,"_ Weiss added.

" _Who's idea was it to make a three-story burger joint?"_ Yang hissed.

" _Probably the same person that thought it was a good idea to build a single-story condo complex,"_ Blake said, staring down at the city with her ordinary binoculars. " _I mean, why would you put two hundred fancy condos on a single story?"_

" _They were just different, Blake,"_ Ruby said primly. " _Don't judge."_

" _Focus, ladies,"_ Weiss said. Ruby could almost hear her eyes roll.

" _Right, sorry,"_ Yang replied. A moment later, " _I'm seeing some beowulfs coming out of the elementary school."_

" _Let's not go in there, okay?"_ Ruby said. " _That school looks_ really _creepy."_

" _Not a fan of wall art, Ruby?"_ Blake asked, smiling.

" _Not when it's creepy wall art,"_ Ruby replied.

" _I'll be sure to make perfectly innocent use of that information, Ruby,"_ Weiss said.

" _You wouldn't..."_ Ruby said. Blake was the only one that saw Weiss' smile.

" _Hey, the highway's finally clear,_ " Yang said. She looked up at the lightening sky. " _Perfect timing, too._ "

" _Right, then,"_ Ruby said. She rose up off her stomach, her bright red cloak flapped gently in the wind, and unfolded her gun-scythe, chambering a round in the process. "S _how time. Remember, we only need to give them about six hours."_

" _Then let's make this the best show we've put on,"_ Weiss said, standing up behind her friend, straightening her combat dress and pulling out her thin sword.

" _Don't we always?"_ Yang said, tightening her wrist-mounted shotguns and pulling back her long blonde hair.

Blake moved forward. There was just enough light coming through the clouds for them to (probably) avoid dying running down the hill, so she drew her gun-blade and cocked its hammer, then moved next to her partner Yang.

" _Singlehandedly taking on a city of Grimm in a desperate attempt to rescue a beloved sister from certain death,"_ Ruby said. _"Oooh, I can't wait to tell Jaune about this, he's going to be so_ jealous!"

oooooo

"Do you think they made it to the city, sir?" one of the sergeants asked.

"No I don't, Lang," Bradley whispered, mindful of Captain Schnee on the other side of the foxhole.

"Don't you think we'd have heard—"

With the sun's light filtering over the lip of the foxhole, every soldier startled at the sound of gunfire. A lot of gunfire.

"How about now, sir?"

"Don't get smart, Sergeant Lang," Bradley said, peeking his head out, "My weapon's still loaded."

Much like them, the Grimm on all sides had perked up at the sounds of fighting. Grimm roaring could be heard now, and it was coming from the city.

For a moment, the Grimm around them seemed unsure of what to do. Then, with a roar echoed a thousand times all around the soldiers, they moved, heading straight for the city.

Looking at the mass of Grimm sprinting toward the noise, Bradley whispered, so quietly he could barely hear it himself, "They can't be _that_ stupid..."

oooooo

"Ruby!" Weiss shouted, turning her back on a charging Ursai in order to concentrate on the dozen or so beowulfs barreling toward her.

The Ursai's pounding feet drew closer. Then in a flurry of rose petals, its head toppled off and landed next to Weiss.

"Weiss!" Yang's voice said from a nearby building. Glancing quickly toward it, slashing through a Grimm with one hand, Weiss cast a glyph with the other, catching her teammate as she fell from the high roof she'd jumped from.

" _Howler Monkey!"_ Ruby yelled from somewhere deep in the Grimm.

Slashing her way through the last beowulf, Weiss cast a glyph at her feet, leaping off it high into the air. Then she jumped up a staircase of glyphs to the top of the tallest nearby building. As she climbed, she could see Blake swinging her way up to the same roof; Yang blasting herself from rooftop to rooftop; and Ruby sprinting up the side of the building.

The Grimm below them roared, frantically clambering to follow.

They each reached the top of the building at roughly the same time, breathing heavily.

"Alright," Ruby said. She breathed lightest of all of them, as per usual, "I _think_ we got their attention."

Another roar.

"Chase time?" Blake asked.

"Yep," Ruby replied. "I think we should lead them sort of toward the park."

They could hear stone cracking as the Grimm barreled their way up after the four of them.

"That's too risky," Weiss said. "If we get caught in the middle, I'm not sure we can fight our way out."

"It's not that big of a park," Yang said, "and there are plenty of trees and buildings to maneuver around with."

"Still," Weiss said, "I don't think we should focus on the park. Right now, in this city, I don't think we should be taking chances like that."

"Weiss is right," Blake said. The sound of the clambering Grimm increased. "I like the idea of getting the Grimm together in one place, but I don't think the park is the safest way to do it."

"What about if we just keep them in the area?" Ruby said, glancing at the lip of the roof. "Still keep them moving back and forth through it, just not by actually being in the park?"

"What, like leading them around in circles using the buildings?" Yang asked.

"I like that better," Weiss said. "There are plenty of buildings all around the park, the Grimm won't be able to pin us down nearly as easily."

"Alright, the park it is then," Ruby said, running toward the edge of the roof. "See you there!"

She hooked her scythe around the body of an Ursai just as it climbed onto the roof from the window below. Then she flipped the Grimm over with a grunt of effort and planted her feet on its back, letting the two of them fall five stories onto the roof of the adjacent building.

The others followed without a second thought.

oooooo

"Well, they _have_ accomplished Phase One," Bradley said to Captain Schnee.

"Yes, sir," the captain replied.

"Let's see how long they last," Bradley whispered. Sinking back onto his heels, he looked over at Captain Schnee.

"At this rate, they'll need to hold them off for three, maybe four more hours," he said at her intense look. "You and I both know that's not going to happen."

The captain stayed silent.

Bradley sighed. "Is it really true they know General Ironwood?"

Captain Schnee took a moment to respond. Finally, "Yes."

Bradley waited for her to continue. Then he mentally kicked himself for his foolish optimism. "I would have thought you'd have better things to think about right now than whether or not information is classified."

"Classified information doesn't stop being classified if we die," Captain Schnee said. It was a testament to the general mood in the foxhole that no one reacted to this morbid statement. Most didn't even look over at the two officers.

"We're all going to be dead soon," Bradley said. "Our corpses can't leak a thing."

"If you're so sure we're going to die," she glared at him, "why don't you just jump out there and get it over with?"

Looking hard at the ground, Bradley didn't have an answer to that.

oooooo

" _Ruby!"_ Weiss' voice said through her earpiece. " _I think we should drop them now!"_

Pulling herself up the ledge of a window, Ruby briefly glanced behind her. The park was bigger than they'd thought; more of a hub of the city than a random bit of grass. They could only reach the edges of the park if they moved forward with Phase Two.

She could just see Yang's bright hair in the morning sun as she blasted her way around the opposite edge of the park. Weiss and Blake were doing their things on either side of the sisters.

She looked down. The park was blanketed by Grimm, all trying to get at the team. They'd herded them perfectly. Every time Grimm came in from further out into the city, the team corralled them into the park itself, keeping them penned in by their interest in the four teammates above.

There were hundreds of them down there, twisting around, crawling over themselves every time one of the team members repositioned.

"Okay!" Ruby shouted, abruptly changing course into a clump of furious Grimm. Slashing through several, she hooked her scythe around one and tossed it up into the air, forcing it to take her place in a diving Nevermore's beak.

While the giant bird tried to dislodge the struggling Grimm from its mouth, Ruby jumped down from her rooftop onto a lower one. " _Begin Operation: Lose Your Marbles!"_

Reaching behind her while she ran, Ruby grabbed a handful of small spheres from her slim backpack. As she leapt from her rooftop again, she tossed the spheres into the writhing Grimm below.

The objective of 'Operation: Lose Your Marbles' was simple: spread hundreds of super-powerful, bouncy-ball sized explosives (she liked to call them Baby Boomers) into a crowd of Grimm. Where they fell, nobody knew.

At least not until they found out.


	4. What Does Duty Mean?

"I don't believe it," Bradley said, looking up from his watch at the thinning Grimm. Four hours. Four _hours_ stuck in a city _packed_ with Grimm, and those girls were still alive and fighting.

"No disrespect to the Corps, sir," Sergeant Lang whispered beside him, "but I'm starting to wish I'd joined up in Vale."

"Any other time and I'd have docked your pay for that comment," Bradley replied lightly.

"How the _hell_ are they doing this?" Lang said.

"If I had an answer to that, sergeant, you'd still be singing the Atlas Imperial Anthem with the rest of us."

Lang chuckled. Then he sobered. "You know, sir, a few more hours like this and we could actually have a shot at this." He shook his head, "I did _not_ see that coming."

"Don't count on it yet, sergeant," Bradley said.

"No sir."

Bradley looked over at Captain Schnee for what seemed like the hundredth time. She'd been picking up her binoculars and staring back at the city every few minutes for the past hour and a half.

She either didn't notice or didn't care that the rest of the company had been glancing her way every few minutes as well. Bradley had seen her focused. He'd seen her intense. But this was the first time in six solid months of fighting that he'd seen her anxious.

He rose up off his heels and crouch-walked over to the woman. She didn't even lower the binoculars when he approached, just kept staring down them, ignoring the sound of his footsteps in the soil.

"Captain," Bradley said softly as he lowered himself down next to her.

"Sir," Captain Schnee replied, _still_ not lowering the binoculars.

"There's nothing you can do for them, captain," Bradley said. That got her attention. "Trying to catch a glimpse of them like this only makes things harder."

She slowly put down the binoculars. For a moment, he thought he'd gotten through. Then he saw her face and berated himself again for the optimism.

She was glaring at him. For a moment, the hairs all across his body stood on end. His heart sped up as his adrenaline spiked.

He looked away. Before she could speak, as he knew she would, the ground trembled beneath them. Captain Schnee had her binoculars back up too quickly for Bradley to see the motion.

" _No!"_ she half whispered, half screamed. When Bradley looked back at the city, he could just see a dust cloud rising from the center of the city.

"Alright, when I say when, blow the BBs," Ruby said, dashing up through a fifteen-story toy store to get as far from the ground as she could.

Bursting back out into the evening light, she briefly regained her bearings. Jogging over to the edge of the roof, looking down at the park and its massive collection of Grimm, Ruby keyed her comm and was about to give the order when the concrete roof beneath her feet dropped away by a lot, almost sending her off into the mass of Grimm far below.

Falling down onto her stomach, Ruby hugged the ground and waited as the building bucked and swayed. Eventually, the violent motion stopped. Ruby immediately shouted into her comm. "Everybody alright?!"

" _Fine!_ " Blake said. " _A couple new cuts and maybe a bruise or two._ "

" _My dress is torn,"_ Weiss said, as if that described things. Which it did.

" _I'm fine too,"_ Yang said, the hint of a smirk in her voice. " _Just a little_ shaken up."

Weiss groaned over the radio. Ruby giggled.

" _Yeah, she's fine,_ " Blake said.

Ruby crawled over to the lip of the building, looking down at the scattering Grimm. "Oh boy..."

" _That's not what I think it is, is it?_ " Weiss said.

" _Definitely looks like it,_ " Blake said.

" _Can we kill it?_ " Yang said. " _Pretty please, sis? I'll spot you two extra turns next time we play cards._ "

" _Absolutely not!_ " Weiss said. Ruby watched the entire park grounds crack as something massive pushed its way up from below.

" _Your sister needs at least six hours, Weiss,_ " Blake reminded her friend. " _We've only given them five."_

A long pause. _"Dammit!"_ Weiss said. " _Fine,"_ a rumbling sound filtered up from the broken ground, " _But only if we're_ careful!"

"Don't you even _think_ about it, Captain!" Bradley hissed.

Winter ignored him as she tightened her Dust-shell reloads around the outside of her thighs.

"This is _desertion,_ Captain!" he went on as she re-laced her boots.

"You'll be killed!" he said. "You think your sister wants that?"

She turned on him. "Would that make a difference if it was your brother back there, sir?"

She watched as he paled. "How did you—"

"I never work with a soldier I don't know," she replied, turning her attention back to her preparations. "If you had been there, you and I both know what you'd do."

"You'll be dishonorably discharged," Bradley whispered. " _Posthumously_ dishonorably discharged."

Winter ignored him as she removed her jacket. Underneath were almost two dozen magazines for her sword. She began rapidly checking the fit of them: unbuttoning, removing, replacing, and re-buttoning each one to make absolutely sure they'd come free when she needed them.

The others were staring now. All twenty five of them openly staring, even when she looked their way.

She didn't bother to try and understand the looks they gave her.

"Don't do this, Captain," Bradley said.

Winter picked up her jacket and considered whether to put it back on. Finally, she dropped it back into the dirt, suddenly apathetic about the dark soil coating its stark-white leather.

As she looked over the lip of the foxhole, Bradley grabbed her arm. She glared at him, but he didn't flinch.

"You know what that was, Captain," Bradley said. "You _know_ you can't help them!"

She pulled her arm out of his grip and went back to looking for an opening to rush to the city.

"I _order_ you to—"

Winter rolled up and out of the foxhole, hopefully avoiding the attention of the few passing Grimm. In one motion, she rose to her feet and cast a string of glyphs of speed in front of her.

She heard Bradley's voice behind her for a moment, then she was too far away for his cautious shout to reach her.

"-to support the Vale huntresses..." Bradley finished. Lowering his head, he shook it at the ground.

When he turned around, he saw, not the veiled judgement he expected, but his surviving troops looking back at him with more respect than he'd ever had directed his way.

"Sergeant Lang," Bradley said to forestall any comments, "The Grimm are thinning out. Get the troops together and make sure we don't leave anything behind that we might need."

"Yes, sir," Lang said. He immediately stooped down and picked up Captain Schnee's jacket, dusting it off as he did, before moving toward the other soldiers, barking orders in a whisper the way only a sergeant could.

Bradley couldn't help but smirk at the sentiment.

Winter wove her way rapidly through the city streets, dodging Grimm faster than they could react, leaving a trail of howling and pounding feet behind her.

Her heart raced and every inch of her body felt frozen as she rushed toward the impossibly deep growl of a Grimm that most soldiers thought was a myth.

Every few minutes the sound of gunfire would stop and her heart would skip, the fear that was already taking over driven closer to succeeding by the sudden silence. But then the sound would return and the fear would move back down a notch, giving her enough room keep moving.

Finally, with the sound of hundreds of Grimm getting closer and closer resonating behind her, she saw it. She stopped and stood, catching her breath in the middle of an elevated roadway between two tall buildings.

Nestled into a recently created crater in the center of the park was a massive Grimm a hundred yards wide and four stories tall, not counting the tentacles. Encased in bone-white armor, its long, segmented tentacles rising high into the air, the Kraken shook the ground with every movement.

Looking up, Winter saw Weiss and her teammates striking at the long tentacles in any way they could, launching off the sides of tentacles or glyphs cast by her sister.

But they had to know it was pointless. They had to. That armor had deflected tank rounds. How could they possibly _not know?_

The Kraken swung wildly at them, the speed of its attacks slowly quickening, its tentacles trying and repeatedly failing to catch one of the girls. Winter could almost see its frustration growing.

"WEISS!" she shouted, not caring about the turning heads of nearby Grimm at the sound. "WEISS!"

But her sister didn't respond. She was too high up, using her glyphs to harass the tentacles from a dozen stories above her.

Winter frantically searched for some way to get to Weiss, but the Grimm had started to close up around her. A small, surprisingly still-rational part of her mind kicked at her in disgust for allowing it.

She looked for and found a likely place to push through the Grimm and reposition, but just as she drew on her semblance to cast a glyph of ice at the thin section of Grimm, the tone of the rumbling changed. In front of her, the Grimm turned to stare at the Kraken.

In a moment of tactical insanity, she followed their eyes.

A crease had appeared along the top of the Kraken and the rumbling sound filtered through the gap. Winter could feel every vibration now, hear the whistle as the air passed through the crack.

As Weiss and her team continued to harass it, the crease widened. It widened until Winter could see a great jaw lined with massive teeth behind it.

Then it roared.

Winter dropped her sword and crouched into herself, shoving her hands tight over her ears. The violent sound rattled every muscle, every bone in her body, barreling through her insides until she couldn't tell if it was the furious noise or the terrified pulse of her heart thundering through her chest.

And a high shriek had joined the deep thunder of the roar. Despite her hands pressing tightly over her ears, the sound got through with almost no difficulty. The sound was so loud and so harsh that she could feel it in her nerves, shocking through them repeatedly, driving every muscle to shiver.

Terrified, Winter looked up, searching for her only sister.

Winter saw her just as she fell after her teammates into the great maw of the Kraken below.

" _NOOOOOOO!"_


	5. Because They Can

"Sir, whatever that was, it's drawn the last of the Grimm to the city," Sergeant Lang said soberly. They hadn't heard any shots since the noise had filtered back to them.

"Then let's move," Bradley said in the same tone. The deaths of four children and one of Atlas' best bought them this chance. A chance pulled straight from Fate's hands though it was, it was the price paid for it that was on everyone's mind.

"Should we call the pilot?" Lang asked.

Bradley was silent a moment. "No," he said finally. "Not yet. I don't trust that he won't fly off to help; I certainly can't trust that he'll have more discipline than Captain Schnee."

Sergeant Lang took a deep breath. "Yes, sir." He turned to the others, "Heinz, Petrov, move yours' out. The rest of you are with me."

While the twenty three other soldiers that had just been spared from the clutches of Death moved rapidly to try and beat the heartless reaper before it changed its mind, Lang reached out a hand and grabbed an arm. In a whisper, he said, "Samuels, hang onto that communicator."

"Sarge?" Samuels said, looking back at the tangle of wires on the ground. "We thinking we're going to need it?"

"Hopefully not," Lang replied. "But let's not push it."

As the last few soldiers mounted the lip of the foxhole, Bradley took one last look back at the city, the cloud of dust lit almost beautifully by the evening sun, and then followed his soldiers to safety.

" _Weiss,"_ Winter whispered, tears starting to fall down her cheeks. " _No, Weiss. Please no."_

Her heart had slowed. She couldn't even feel it beating anymore. In fact, there was a lot she couldn't feel anymore. She wasn't cold or hot. Her ears, which had screamed after the Kraken's roar, had seemed to disappear.

She could barely feel the course asphalt under her knees when she fell to them. Her sword shifted harshly under her right knee, but she didn't hear it and barely noticed the flat of its blade digging into her skin.

The only thing she _could_ feel, and the feeling grew stronger and stronger the longer she sat with tears pouring down her cheeks, was a hard pressure in her gut. It grew as the sight of her sister falling into the now-sealed mouth of a Kraken replayed itself over and over in her mind.

Weiss hadn't even cast a glyph to save herself; she'd just fallen straight down.

After a moment, she realized her ears had returned. She could hear the lesser Grimm starting to shake off the roar themselves. Hear them moving, hear that movement start toward her.

She let her hand fall to her sword. Her hand wrapped around the handle, but she didn't pick it up. She didn't know if she wanted to. The Grimm grew closer and closer, and she could hear their roars, feel the ground shiver with their pounding steps and the Kraken's shifting.

She still hadn't decided whether to act when a deafening noise, louder even then the roar of the Kraken, silenced them all.

A split second later, Winter found herself in an alley, crashing hard against the wall of a small Dust shop.

The pain of colliding with the wall shocked her out of her grief and back into survival mode. She shook her foggy head to try and regain some of her concentration. Still, it took a few seconds to realize that she was on fire.

Quickly, she patted out the flames licking the hem of her shirt and the knees of her pants. With her instincts returned, her discipline followed, and she wasted no energy on panicked movements.

She made a checklist of her physical injuries. Right knee lowered mobility. Bruise to the skin, not the bone or ligaments. Left angle twisted, but recovering. Not sprained. Back heavily bruised, but no apparent broken ribs. Bleeding from the back of the head, no signs of concussion.

Her Aura had protected her from the worst of it. She stood, rolling her shoulders. Her sword was near a dumpster. After retrieving it, she strode out to the street, ignoring the pains.

She'd expected a wall of Grimm to be waiting for her. Instead, it was a wall of flames. Grimm bodies burned with the trees and grass of the park. The gutters were filled with decaying pieces of Grimm, and the sun could barely get through the rising cloud of smoke.

Winter sized up several nearby buildings and, deciding on a three-story one nearby, she raced over to and up it for a better view.

She looking out at the park and, upon seeing it all, struggled to understand. The flames weren't just where she'd been. They formed a ring all around the massive Kraken, which had begun to make a high-pitched noise, squirming in place as it did so.

Winter had never heard of something like this; a Grimm able to control fire. She'd been fighting Grimm for most of her adult life, but never once had anyone mentioned something like this.

Then the Kraken squirmed faster, until Winter could only describe it as writhing. Its massive tentacles flailed at nothing, hit nothing, and every few seconds curled in on themselves. The relatively quiet high-pitched noise grew louder and louder, forcing Winter to cover her ears against it.

But this time, there was no rumble. It didn't sound angry or aggressive, Winter thought. Not like before. Combined with the writhing, it sounded like it was in pain.

Then, with one last great squeal that sent spasms all along Winter's body, the Kraken's tentacles slashed through the air faster then ever, then fell limply to the ground, suddenly lifeless.

The squealing stopped and a few seconds later the echoes of it faded.

In the sudden silence, a voice shouted. Winter heard a name.

"Blake!" Blake shouted past the slime as she finally cut her way through the Kraken's outer shell. Once again, her earpiece was totally ruined.

A moment later, "Yang!" The voice sounded from far to her right.

From the opposite side of the Kraken, Blake heard another voice, " _Weiss!"_

" _Ruby!_ " the name came less than a second later.

"You're last, Ruby!" Blake shouted, wiping her eyes clear of Kraken gore and looking around. The Baby Boomers had gone off just fine, apparently. The flames started by the small remote-detonated explosives were still dying down.

" _Dang it!_ " Ruby's voice said from her left. " _That's not fair, I couldn't find the crack!"_

" _Too bad, Ruby,"_ Yang yelled. Blake could see the Grimm moving from beyond the fire. " _You know the rules! I want two scoops of Mango Sherbet and one of Orange Creme!"_

"Three scoops of Pistachio Anchovy for me!" Blake yelled, clearing off most of the gore on her sword with the dirt below her.

" _And I guess you want your usual, Weiss?"_ Ruby said, her voice dejected.

" _Yes, I do,"_ Weiss said. " _Three scoops of Mint Chocolate."_

" _Fine,"_ Ruby said. Then, " _Uh oh. Looks like the Grimm are moving again. Everybody get over here."_

"On the way!" Blake said. She took a shortcut over the top of the Kraken and saw the black gore-covered forms of Yang and Weiss doing the same.

 _I hit my head far_ _harder than I thought,_ Winter thought. Not only did she hear their voices arguing about ice cream, she could see them running up and over the completely inert Kraken, moving from her right to her left.

But it couldn't possibly be real…

"Did you hear that sir?" Lang asked Bradley. They were closing the last mile and could see the extraction hill in front of them. The ground stilled beneath their feet.

"Yes, sergeant, I did," Bradley said, his voice troubled.Whatever had made that noise earlier, it sounded exactly like it had just died.

"You don't think it was the girls…"

"No, I don't," Bradley replied immediately. "It's just not possible..."

Then they heard something else coming from the city, a sound just near enough to identify.

Weapons fire.

"Okay, I'm not liking the look of this!" Yang shouted as she pounded an Ursai into the ground.

"Neither am I!" Blake said, whipping her blade by its rope through a pack of beowulfs.

"There's still too many!" Weiss shouted, casting a glyph in front of Ruby. "We didn't bring enough Baby Boomers for a full on fight!"

"We need to keep moving around!" Ruby shouted, firing her scythe's rifle through the glyphs, catching several lanes of Grimm on fire.

They were very nearly surrounded, but every time they tried to break through a gap, a dozen Grimm would close it.

Then Ruby heard a voice from her left, somewhere in the city.

" _WEISS!"_

The four friends spared a glance for each other. "Was that-"

"Winter!" Weiss said, confirming it. Then louder, loud enough to reach the buildings, "WINTER! A LITTLE HELP?!"

Blake said, "What is she even-"

"Does it really matter?" Yang replied. "Take what you can get, Blake, this is getting really hairy."

"That better not have been a pun!" Blake said, her black bow having fallen off of her cat ears.

Winter jumped down off the building, rolled, and ran as fast as she could toward her sister and the several hundred Grimm bearing down on her.

Hallucination or not, she wasn't taking chances. Not this time. If it was Weiss, she was going to kill every single Grimm between herself and her sister. If it wasn't…

"Weiss! Weiss answer me!"

A voice filtered through the Grimm forms. " _Little busy, Winter!"_

A growth of ice appeared somewhere deep behind the Grimm, then a moment later Winter heard it shatter as a gun went off.

She was still almost two dozen yards from them, and the Grimm were closing around the four girls faster and faster. Sprinting now, Winter used a glyph to summon a spectral deathstalker, then commanded it to charge forward into the fray. She barely paid attention as it tore through a dozen Grimm, nor did she spare it a thought as it was smothered back into nonexistence.

Still running at full speed, passing over, under and beside Grimm as she went, Winter threw ice and fire, electricity and light, and summoned Grimm after spectral Grimm toward the furious mass that had well and truly surrounded her sister.

"Weiss, hang on!" Winter shouted through the knot in her stomach. She could still hear gunshots, and every now and then one of the girls yelled the name of another. But she couldn't _see_ them. Not anymore. There were simply too many Grimm.

Then suddenly, she was there. Several Grimm broke off from the outer edge of the writhing crowd and attacked her. She slashed through them faster than a blink. Then she disconnected her interlocked swords and properly attacked.

Furiously, she cast glyph after glyph, shattering and burning through Grimm after Grimm, fighting desperately to make even a _dent_ in the black wall in front of her.

But the Grimm she'd passed quickly added to its numbers. Soon she was struggling to avoid being surrounded herself.

Winter slashed through Grimm faster than she ever had before, but even as she made some small progress through the Grimm, she knew it wasn't going to be enough. She had to fight harder.

She couldn't hear her sister's voice anymore. The four girls had stopped calling to each other, leaving only the sounds of their weapons to tell Winter they were still alive.

"Hang on, Weiss! _"_

"Don't stop!" Ruby shouted as she slashed through a dozen beowulfs, using her scythe's gun to add power to the swing. "Don't slow down!"

The Grimm pushed the four teammates closer and closer together. Team RWBY fought for the space they had, pushing back every advance they could, killing every Grimm they saw in a desperate fight for maneuvering room.

"Count on it, sis!" Yang shouted as she flipped over the rolling form of Blake.

"Blake!" Ruby shouted. As an Ursai charged at her, leading behind it a spear of Grimm, Blake's hooked gun shot forward, dragging the Grimm deeper into the circle. Ruby immediately attacked the dozen Grimm behind it, forcing them back while Blake finished off the Ursai and Yang and Weiss momentarily took up the slack on the opposite side.

The Grimm may have pushed them closer together, but at a certain point, despite their vast numbers, the four Huntresses held them back.

Dancing around each other, no longer even communicating, just acting on instinct born of three years fighting together, the four Huntresses held back the massive wall of Grimm; one that encircled them ten or twelve bodies deep.

The slowly dissolving corpses built up around the Huntresses like a defense, forcing small and large Grimm alike to climb over it to reach them.

The Huntresses fired through augmenting glyphs, swung by rope around the circle of Grimm, slicing and blasting through body after cruel body, faster than even they would have said was possible.

And, minute after minute, Ruby, Weiss, Yang, and Blake kept their small circle of ground. Minute after minute, they forced the Grimm away from it. Minute after minute, they pushed back every incursion the Grimm attempted.

Minute after minute, Grimm corpse after Grimm corpse, Team RWBY owned that patch of priceless dirt.

Winter drew her sword down through another Grimm, paying absolutely no attention as its body burned at her feet. She carried that movement through another, then another. No effort went to waste; every single scrap of it was spent on striking down one Grimm after another in an efficiency of movement that would make the greatest dancer bow their head in shame.

But a small part of her brain noticed the bodies she left behind her. Completely against her will, it noticed how little all those bodies seemed to matter to the innumerable Grimm surrounding her only real family.

Despite her attempts to smother it, that small part began to grow. The numb survivalism that had carried her through all those bodies began to give way to the total fear of her mad dash through the city.

 _There was nothing she could do._

The thought struck her like a hammer. And like brittle steel, she shattered from it. She'd refused to accept it; charged forward against orders in denial of it.

But here, despite all her skill, she could finally see it. _There was_ nothing _she could do._

However, just as her peerless grace began to crumble, a great shout tore through the air, overpowering the sound of her sister's friends' weapons fire.

The long, long shout ripped through the Grimm all around her, throwing their bodies into the air, tearing them into pieces like so much tissue paper.

Then the noise of a dozen small arms joined the shout, and Winter understood.

Looking up, an airship fired its chain guns into the Grimm. As they scattered, the remnants of Major Bradley's company gunned each and every one of them down.

The hail of bullets swept through the Grimm as the airship circled around. Winter seized her opportunity.

"WEISS!" she shouted, crashing through the bone-white plates of a deathstalker and blazing through a half-dozen Ursai.

The sound of a Gatling gun firing constantly and the dozen or so soldiers supporting it faded from her attention as she approached the center of the Grimm. "Weiss! Answer me!"

Panicking, Winter climbed the wall of Grimm one corpse at a time. She placed a foot wrong and slid down, but immediately began her ascent again.

Two feelings warred each other as she rose: the anticipation of finding her sister alive somewhere in this mess and the fear of finding the opposite.

She had no idea what she'd see once she reached the peak of bodies. The idea of going through all this only to see her sister lying there…

Then suddenly, she was one small step from the top. She took a deep breath, thankful that the Grimm smelled of nothing, and pulled herself over the top.

Despite the dark images that had pounded through her brain on the long fight to this point, she was wholly unprepared for what she saw at the bottom of the mound.

"So that's… what it's like… to fight for your life," Yang said between heavy breaths, leaning her back against her sister's.

"Apparent...ly," Blake answered, her head in Yang's lap.

"Not fun," Yang said.

"I told you… this was a bad… idea," Weiss said from Ruby's side.

"You were… right... Again," Ruby said, one arm lying limp over Weiss. "Sorry."

"Apology...accepted."

None of them had bothered to count how many bodies high the Grimm had gotten. The only thing that mattered was the twenty or so square feet of clear ground they sat on.

" _Weiss!"_ A voice screamed from above them.

Weiss spared a tiny shred of energy to turn her head and look.

"Hey...Winter," she said, eyes drooping. "Thanks for... coming."

They heard something that would have been considered a sob if it hadn't come from where Winter was watching.


	6. Epilogue

The soldiers saluted them when they stumbled aboard. Several of them gave up their seats as soon as one of the girls—Huntresses—so much as looked at it.

The four of them were asleep before the plane left the ground, covered from head to toe in oozing black gore.

The pilot, Jake Richards, had given them crap about messing up his seats.

Major Bradley walked over to where Captain Schnee sat staring almost unblinkingly at her sister across the hold. He took a seat next to his subordinate. "Captain Schnee."

"It's Winter, sir," she replied calmly, still watching her sister sleep soundly despite the noise of the plane's cabin. "I might as well start getting used to hearing my name again; I'll be a civilian soon."

"Only if you want to be," Bradley answered. That got her attention.

"Sir?"

"You were right, Captain Schnee," he said. "I _would_ have gone back. I think any decent soldier would in your position. I'd almost say that any decent soldier _should_ go back."

Captain Schnee was silent, staring at her sister again. "You ordered me to stay. I disobeyed. Command won't care what a decent soldier would or wouldn't do."

Bradley smiled. "Actually, I didn't order you to stay." She glanced back at him sharply. "In point of fact, I ordered you to support your sister and her team. And you followed your orders to the letter."

She frowned at him. He waited.

Finally, almost stiffly, she said, "Thank you, Major."

Bradley smiled. "You're welcome, Captain Schnee."

"Winter," she said immediately, returning to staring intently at her sister. "My name is Winter. You've earned that much from me."

Bradley nodded solemnly. "Then you're welcome, Winter."

As they spoke, the rest of the company slumped down in seats, against the hard metal walls, and even on the ridged metal deck. In a few minutes, they too fell asleep under the weight of their crashing adrenaline.

Only the two officers and the sergeants stayed awake.

Eventually, Bradley decided to break the silence. "You should have seen her fighting, Winter." She turned to look at him. "You should have seen _them_ fighting. I've never seen such complete coordination."

She stayed silent, looking back at her sister.

Bradley pressed on. "It was like they were four dancers moving together, each of them knowing the others' steps."

Winter didn't respond.

Bradley shook his head. "You should be-"

"I didn't know you were a poet, sir," Winter interrupted.

Bradley mentally reeled from the comment. "Sorry?"

"What you said before," Winter said. "About them being 'four dancers moving together.' I didn't know you were a poet."

Bradley chuckled. "Yeah, well, I may have gotten carried away there. I was going to go into Art School, but my parents insisted I become a combat officer instead."

Winter smiled at the joke. He couldn't help but hold his breath, genuinely scared of startling the expression away.

"I don't know when it happened, sir," Winter said, her smile fading.

Bradley exhaled slowly, shaking his head where she couldn't see it. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know when she stopped being just my little sister," Winter looked down at the deck. "I still thought that I was her teacher. That she hadn't learned enough from me to accomplish something like this. But she has, and I don't know how or when."

Bradley took a long moment to respond. Finally, after running through several dozen possible platitudes and encouragements, he settled on the most obvious. Simple, as they say, is usually best.

"Then maybe you should ask."

Winter turned and looked at him. He waited for some hard response, one of the thousand she'd managed to use without breaking any of the Atlas military's strict insubordination rules.

Instead, she smiled. It was small, it was quiet, but it was a smile. That brought the sum total of her positive expressions of emotion while under his command to two.

As far as he was concerned, that was an infinite amount of forward progress.


End file.
